I think it does the opposite of creating accountability -- at least accountability in sufficient amounts to metrics we should care about.

One of the major weaknesses of the rankings is that they don't tell you which schools are poor choices. They only tell you that one school is a poorer choice than another. It doesn't say that any of them are poor enough not to attend.

Unless you get in to the T-14, it really comes down to where you want to practice more then anything. For about 45 of the 50 states, I would tell someone make sure you go to the best school in the state you plan on practicing in to be the most competitive. If you have no preference on what state you live in, then apply to schools in your #'s range and pick the one that is most competitive in its particular market relative to the other ones (ex. if you get in to two law schools and one is the best in its market and the other one is third best in its market go to the one that is best in its market as long as the markets are similar). The other 5 or so states either have multiple elite law schools (CA, NY, IL, VA/DC region) or have large/booming economies/markets to where a 2nd place school is good enough (TX).

National rankings become bogus because choosing between say Arizona State (#26) and University of Florida (#47) isn't about choosing the better law school, it's about choosing where you ultimately want to live despite the rankings clearly suggesting one is better then the other. An ASU grad isn't going to do better in Florida then a UF grad, class rank the same, and vice versa of course.

A better ranking system would be a ranking for each state or region. For example, a ranking for FL (my home state hence why I keep using it as the example) might look something like this:

1.-14. The T-14 schools15. UF16. FSU17. UMand so on.

The ranking could tell the reader how many people from each school are reporting from that region/state and then average salaries and employment rates from each school in that state.

Of course I'm sure some people really have no clue or don't care where they practice. In that case some sort of national ranking might be preferred, maybe just one that doesn't use some of US News's criteria

Mr.Scoops wrote:Unless you get in to the T-14, it really comes down to where you want to practice more then anything. For about 45 of the 50 states, I would tell someone make sure you go to the best school in the state you plan on practicing in to be the most competitive. If you have no preference on what state you live in, then apply to schools in your #'s range and pick the one that is most competitive in its particular market relative to the other ones (ex. if you get in to two law schools and one is the best in its market and the other one is third best in its market go to the one that is best in its market as long as the markets are similar). The other 5 or so states either have multiple elite law schools (CA, NY, IL, VA/DC region) or have large/booming economies/markets to where a 2nd place school is good enough (TX).

National rankings become bogus because choosing between say Arizona State (#26) and University of Florida (#47) isn't about choosing the better law school, it's about choosing where you ultimately want to live despite the rankings clearly suggesting one is better then the other. An ASU grad isn't going to do better in Florida then a UF grad, class rank the same, and vice versa of course.

A better ranking system would be a ranking for each state or region. For example, a ranking for FL (my home state hence why I keep using it as the example) might look something like this:

1.-14. The T-14 schools15. UF16. FSU17. UMand so on.

The ranking could tell the reader how many people from each school are reporting from that region/state and then average salaries and employment rates from each school in that state.

Of course I'm sure some people really have no clue or don't care where they practice. In that case some sort of national ranking might be preferred, maybe just one that doesn't use some of US News's criteria

Great post!

A regional system would work better agreed, especially in States like NC, CA or FL that have many schools of varying quality.

Aftermath wrote:I understand why the third point is being made, but it's not entirely true. The rankings are based on a number grade which takes a bit of digging to find. To use the examples in the post, Columbia received a grade of 93 while NYU got an 89. As for Cornell, their score was 79 and Vanderbilt's was 74. So the gap between Cornell and Vanderbilt is a little wider than it is between NYU and Columbia. One could argue that this grade is not much more informative, but it is there and shows differences in quality moreso than the rankings themselves.

Where did you find these grades? I don't see them listed on the online version of the list.

lacrossebrother wrote:Dumb article.1. the goal is to come up with some proxy to determine what the best law schools are. anyone can list last year's employment rankings. you'll find however that those numbers fluctuate. the fact that everyone says you want to be a lawyer --that's the point of the lsat --doesn't mean that the fucking purpose of legal education is to maximize employment outcomes only.

what's fucking even more insane is that you started an entire website called "law school transparency" whereby you challenge the notion that a single percentage of employment is an appropriate means to gauge employment . so you fucking say "only 18% of your ranking is based on this really important number..." even though you think it's a shitty number to begin. dope.

moreover, "only 18%"?? you give us absolutely no idea if that's actually high or low. do a sensititivy analysis with this number you hate so much and then offer your still super layman's opinion that "this is failure number 1."

2. i don't even get this point. it's impossible to try to determine if university of arizona is a better school than uconn because people who go to school in arizona won't want to work in uconn? No shit. Perhaps this is why they don't do a fucking 100% employment ranking?? Instead, they ask judges and employers to rate their perception of the products of these schools. They try to rate the faculty. And ya, they take a look at the fucking incoming product because it's pretty easy to see that if one school, on average, has a bunch of dopes attending and the other doesn't, the fact that they aren't in competitive markets doesn't preclude reaching a conclusion. They try to gauge the respective quality of the school's infrastructure and commitment to research by looking at the size of the library (volumes is an imprecise measure, but whatever). The fact that they attempt to do this for everyone, for their magazine, doesn't make the whole thing a failure.

3. There's a raw score you fucking moron4. it's a failure that the magazine doesn't do a more in-depth analysis of each 2-3 swap? Mr. "only 18%" is upset that the magazine doesn't explain with data graphics somewhere what the most heavily involved coefficient contributing to each swap. 5. ok ya i agree this is dumb. what failures.

Would be interesting to see for the second and third schools how many are geographically adjacent to that school's home state. I'd think that for the T-14 the breakdown would be NY, DC, CA, IL.l, but for others it would be all regional.

pipipipi wrote:Anyone has any thought on the trend of Michigan and Penn specifically? Do you think this trend will continue? Is such trend important when picking a legal education in the long term?

You didn't read the post, did you?

Well, I had, and I understand why USNews ranking is not a very informative tool because of the weight it put on certain factors. Nevertheless, there is value in it, and I am more interested not in why a certain school is ranked higher than another (I don't think this means the higher one is better than the later one), but in how a school has evolved comparatively, given those weighted factors.

Even if you don't agree with usnews (I don't either and sometimes I think BL+FC combined is a better indication, for me), that is not to deny the fact that Michigan was one on par with YLS and HLS decades back, while Penn is more at the bottom of top law schools and attracted less prominent professors as it is doing now.

I am interested, in how this has trend happened, and big, strategic choices these school make over the decades will have any influences in their development in the next few decades. Frankly, my posted question is very genreally, but it certainly doesn't warrant above stereotypes I am receiving.

I would imagine a big difference between Penn and Michigan is that Penn feeds into the biggest legal market in the country, while Michigan has lost Detroit and doesn't really have a captive market to make up for that.

But really where schools were decades ago and where they'll be decades from now doesn't matter for choosing a school.

The real rating of every law school is 0, from Yale to Cooley. That's about how much useful information each of them imparts upon you before you embark on your practice of law. Not a single one of those schools teaches you how to draft a good answer, how to write an effective retainer agreement, how to interview prospective clients, how to do an effective deposition, how to manage a trust account, or even how to file a case. Even the legal ethics courses they supposedly give you are a major joke, and gloss over or ignore the most important areas.

Most of the people "teaching" you how to be a lawyer have never practiced law, anyway, so what do they even know? (Ironically, this is even more likely to be true at the higher-ranked law schools.)

The US News rankings are perfect for the legal industry, though, because they represent a completely empty prestige-fest. This prestige has no ultimate value but to the law schools themselves and the biglaw hiring committees, who then up n' out 75% of the people they hire in the first 5 years anyway.

There's no way this nonsense would survive in the real world. If law schools were somehow forced to charge what they're actually worth in tuition, universities would be shutting them down left and right. Luckily for law schools, there's free student loan money that they never ever have to pay back, so they don't have to experience the real world. But without massive school debt forcing them to, very few people would have any inclination to work in the awful, self-flagellating world of Biglaw.

I think the US News rankings are primarily for prestige-related things but, something I'm learning to come to terms with is, at least for biglaw, prestige seriously matters. Big law firms are generally looking to hire from T10 schools; whether or not I agree with how the T10 got to where they are doesn't really seem to matter, all that matters is I better get with the program if I want to be a serious competitor for the big firms. I've had attorneys say, "I really wish it wasn't this way but, seriously, if you can afford to, just go to the highest-ranking school you can get into."

brinicolec wrote:I think the US News rankings are primarily for prestige-related things but, something I'm learning to come to terms with is, at least for biglaw, prestige seriously matters. Big law firms are generally looking to hire from T10 schools; whether or not I agree with how the T10 got to where they are doesn't really seem to matter, all that matters is I better get with the program if I want to be a serious competitor for the big firms. I've had attorneys say, "I really wish it wasn't this way but, seriously, if you can afford to, just go to the highest-ranking school you can get into."

Of course.

I'm just pointing out how much of a meaningless circle-jerk this whole racket is. Somehow, all these people make money hand-over-fist without actually accomplishing anything.

It's a giant circular reasoning exercise, where the industry itself defines itself as elite based mostly on arbitrary and meaningless criteria that they themselves invent and perpetuate, and then says "therefore give us tons of money."

brinicolec wrote:I think the US News rankings are primarily for prestige-related things but, something I'm learning to come to terms with is, at least for biglaw, prestige seriously matters. Big law firms are generally looking to hire from T10 schools; whether or not I agree with how the T10 got to where they are doesn't really seem to matter, all that matters is I better get with the program if I want to be a serious competitor for the big firms. I've had attorneys say, "I really wish it wasn't this way but, seriously, if you can afford to, just go to the highest-ranking school you can get into."

exactly!

do you think there is meaningful a (for biglaw) prestige gap among MVBP? How about between T6 and T10?

brinicolec wrote:I think the US News rankings are primarily for prestige-related things but, something I'm learning to come to terms with is, at least for biglaw, prestige seriously matters. Big law firms are generally looking to hire from T10 schools; whether or not I agree with how the T10 got to where they are doesn't really seem to matter, all that matters is I better get with the program if I want to be a serious competitor for the big firms. I've had attorneys say, "I really wish it wasn't this way but, seriously, if you can afford to, just go to the highest-ranking school you can get into."

exactly!

do you think there is meaningful a (for biglaw) prestige gap among MVBP? How about between T6 and T10?

Nope, they are fungible in preftige. And there might be a gap at the extremes for T6 v. T10, it's not a generally worthwhile distinction to make because those extremes cannot be planned for. In that sense, it's equally unicorny to assume T6 gives you an appreciably better chance at those jobs than T10, because both can get those unicorns, but you can't plan for that likelihood. It's akin to believing you'll be in the 5% of a regional that goes BL. Is it possible to capture that unicorn? Sure, but the difference between T6 and T10 for those unicorns can't be particularly quantified because it's relying on subjective things like elite level hiring. No sense in relying on that.

UVA2B wrote: Nope, they are fungible in preftige. And there might be a gap at the extremes for T6 v. T10, it's not a generally worthwhile distinction to make because those extremes cannot be planned for. In that sense, it's equally unicorny to assume T6 gives you an appreciably better chance at those jobs than T10, because both can get those unicorns, but you can't plan for that likelihood. It's akin to believing you'll be in the 5% of a regional that goes BL. Is it possible to capture that unicorn? Sure, but the difference between T6 and T10 for those unicorns can't be particularly quantified because it's relying on subjective things like elite level hiring. No sense in relying on that.

Which are the bottom four schools in the T10? I get the T6 distinction as CCN are always 4-6, but the rest of the T13 seem somewhat more fluid. And do you see any meaningful difference in outcomes between T10 and T13?

UVA2B wrote: Nope, they are fungible in preftige. And there might be a gap at the extremes for T6 v. T10, it's not a generally worthwhile distinction to make because those extremes cannot be planned for. In that sense, it's equally unicorny to assume T6 gives you an appreciably better chance at those jobs than T10, because both can get those unicorns, but you can't plan for that likelihood. It's akin to believing you'll be in the 5% of a regional that goes BL. Is it possible to capture that unicorn? Sure, but the difference between T6 and T10 for those unicorns can't be particularly quantified because it's relying on subjective things like elite level hiring. No sense in relying on that.

Which are the bottom four schools in the T10? I get the T6 distinction as CCN are always 4-6, but the rest of the T13 seem somewhat more fluid. And do you see any meaningful difference in outcomes between T10 and T13?

I actually don't believe in the T10 distinction either, it was more a reference of the quoted "MVPB." There is possibly some regionality concerns at Cornell with NYC (unlikely because that could equally make NYU or Columbia "slightly regional," which is silly), but even that seems unlikely. Placement power distinctions are a bit overblown here at times. Duke and Michigan have similar placement power. Same for NU and UVA. I was more pointing out that there are a few jobs out there that CCN gives you a bump for (Wachtell, W&C, there's probably more worth listing), but no incoming student should reasonably be basing their law school decision on these statistically unlikely outcome.